


The Skipping Stone

by Twelvefootmountaintroll



Series: Seven Stones [6]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Broh Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twelvefootmountaintroll/pseuds/Twelvefootmountaintroll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iroh is burning up. Bolin cools him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Skipping Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Day seven prompt: Doubt.

Iroh knows intimately well the insatiable hunger, the infinite appetite of fire; the grasping souls around him outpace even the roaring consummation of fantasy’s hottest flame. And yet burning inside him is a different desire. Sips of champagne do nothing to dampen the smoldering within, and still the swirling of guests around him continues. 

Rueful is he of the decision to bring a marked United Republic vessel to the crowning city. In spite of his careful considerations for a clandestine coming and a quiet encounter with Bolin, someone had noticed. Rueful is he also of his woefully naive estimate of two weeks of bureaucracy; two weeks hence, perhaps, will he be halfway through.

Their words slide off him—they vanish like droplets of water vaporizing on a hot pan. They throw themselves more and more in his direction, as though the cloud of steam, of once-words, attracts them. Soon they will condense; soon they will rain down and extinguish him. He must escape, lest he be utterly smothered, lest he be caught in lightning forking from one drop to the next. Maybe he could channel it through himself and throw it back to the ones who would see him paralyzed and chained to their purpose. Maybe he could channel himself through it. Maybe he could escape.

He wants to hate that politician—the one who spotted his ship. He wants to hate that Mr Zhang, or Mrs Li, or Master Ouyang, but he could better spend his effort convincing fire not to burn. He never escapes the drudgery of it all, the utter soul-crushing grind, but out at sea it’s better. He listens to the unending mantra of the waves smashing, sloshing, sweeping and loses the human voices in the wind. Of course they would reach their choking hold out over any distance and appear to display the Prince of the Fire Nation, but his ships outrun them. And when their burning hunger becomes too much, he quenches it in the shocking cold wetness of the ocean.

Even as a child, he could never be free of their insinuating fingers.

“Come here, child, you must be dressed,” they would whisper. “You must be bathed, you must be scrubbed clean. You must be brushed, clipped, trained.”

He relished donning a military uniform at the lowest rank. It felt to him the greatest freedom. Every moment of his day and night planned for him still, and yet the responsibility to hold himself to schedule entirely novel.

Now others dress him, remind him again and again of his schedule once more, but that freedom remains, like the scorching, yellow-orange core of an ember smoldering under depleted ash. He would need only breathe a little more life onto it to spark flaming independence, and how he longs for that liberty. He can see it—the dancing waves, the surging seas, riding on flames jetting from fists and gazing down at the city from the clouds—in the glassy eyes gazing at him and begging of him. He wishes to spare himself, to weigh down those unblinking lids with heavy coins. Would that they did not find sustenance in gold as in fame.

A week passes, each day the same. He is in hell, if hell were lit with fire burning in the mind and not the flesh. Today is as yesterday, and tomorrow as today: Is this not the definition of eternal torment? He is burning up.

But hold! Today is not as yesterday. Anguish breaks; someone approaches. Someone with lively eyes; someone solid, not evanescent; someone undemanding, with fingers for fixing, not grasping. How...?

“Good evening, General.”

“Good evening.”

“I heard you were in town.”

“Yes. Who hasn’t heard, by now?”

“The Council haven’t announced a celebration of your return yet; maybe they don’t know. I’m sure I could slip in a word with Tenzin...”

The burning within him has crisped his voice and Iroh cannot speak. He doesn’t need to.

“General, you look like some fresh air would do you well. Shall we step outside? No, just the two of us—we’ll be fine for a moment.”

He feels the binding grips fall away as they step out onto the law. The night is clear, dewy, cool, alight with the moon’s tricky radiance. The world appears awash with blues and greys, yet the moon is but a warmer, dimmer reflection of the sun, like a dusty patina on a mirror. He breathes and no poisonous words fly into his lungs. They are silent, for a moment.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t. Just for another minute. Come with me.”

Iroh follows his companion, sucked into the vacuum of motion like a candle in its candlestick. Yet the breeze does not make him flutter. He is rooted. Soon he sees, as they walk, that fire may nestle close to earth and not risk burning it; fire may slumber and smolder—earth will cradle it.

With gravity befitting a king, Bolin hands him a smooth stone by water’s edge.

“Skip it,” he breathes.

He skips it.

The stone vanishes into the placid darkness, propelled, surely, with a little help from Bolin’s bending. Only the periodic blooming of ripples on the smooth surface of the water betrays the skipping. The night seems wholly still, wholly silent but for this one moment.

Iroh is a banked flame—a white-hot ember. His reticence from the restaurant burns away in a cloud of sooty uncertainty floating away on the night breeze. His breathing slow and steady, free from choking, cloying doubt, he yearns to know. He needs to know; soon he will flare up and go out, if he doesn’t know.

He searches for a stone, one that is flat, round, smooth. When he dips down to retrieve it, so, too, do his fingers dip into the clear water of the shore. The rock is exquisite in his hand, so it must go. One hand takes another; one stone slips from fingers to palm. The warmth of bodies threatens to overcome the damp cool.

He must know.

“May I?”

This time, no cool stone and no quenching water comes between skin pressing against skin. Blazing fire and solid stone; together they warm and shelter. Together, lips and teeth and tongue, they are more. They are life and sustenance.

“Bolin—”

“General, a word of wisdom from your official advisor?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t ruin the moment.”

“As you will.”

They are a long time in returning to the party.


End file.
